It started off with a bang: SpaceX IPOed on June 12 with an opening price of $150 on their first day of trade, well above the offering price of $135, and within two days, enterprising traders were ravenously bidding up 380 calls (expiring in just days) in hopes of sending the stock soaring in hopes of orchestrating a gamma squeeze. 

They are going for it https://t.co/tT4cJns9nv pic.twitter.com/P6NTzq4tx2

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 16, 2026

In a note out this morning, Canaccord described the “new level of optimism” that accompanied the SpaceX IPO as follows:

SPCX dynamics indicate new level of frenzy: prior to this historic IPO, we felt AI optimism was robust and certainly at times overdone, but largely funded by rational (if not exuberant) institutions including large, well capitalized public companies and PE investors. In our view, SPCX has marked a new chapter in this saga, ushering in a greater level of retail involvement and driving the stock into the top 6 market cap companies in the world, and in its first week of trading, adding the equivalent of ~1/2 the value of META, with a market value much greater than sister company TSLA despite generating only ~20% of its revenue base. Despite the company name, revenues are skewed towards connectivity (Starlink contributing $11.39 billion), with launch services generating only $4.1 billion (AI compute was $3.2 billion in 2025).

Vanda Track was even more effusive, and in a retrospective published earlier on Monday wrote that “SpaceX’s first week of trading was one for the record books. Retail investors bought a net $405mn of SPCX during its first 5 trading sessions, comfortably the strongest retail IPO debut in recent history. Retail buying was extreme during the first few sessions before moderating later in the week. The flow profile increasingly resembles a retail investor that is building long-term positions rather than chasing a short-term meme stock.“

The scale of retail buying in SPCX last week becomes even more remarkable when put into context. Retail investors bought more SPCX last week than they bought across all other Mag 7 stocks combined (total activity of the last 5 days in NVDA, MSFT, AMZN, META, GOOGL and GOOG was $278mn combined). They also bought more SpaceX than the combined retail buying of SPY & QQQ over the past week ($352mn). For a stock that only started trading last week, SpaceX is already competing with the market’s biggest stocks and ETFs for retail capital.

As has become the norm, while buying of the stock was off the charts, retail investors quickly congregated to various leveraged SpaceX products, which also attracted strong demand. Retail investors bought $65.8mn of the Leverage Shares 2x Long SPCX Daily ETF during its first few trading sessions (while a sizeable number, but it remains well below the type of activity normally seen during speculative retail frenzies). It still dwarfs recent thematic launches – the Roundhill Memory ETF DRAM attracted just $5.6mn during its first four trading days, and it took 22 sessions for cumulative retail buying in DRAM to exceed the amount already allocated to the leveraged SpaceX ETF.

Yet after bursting out of the gate, momentum has fizzled and hopes that the stock would gamma squeeze into orbit (on a reusable rocket, of course), quickly faded. The result: after peaking on June 16 – the day SPCX stock hit a record $225 and briefly topped Microsoft in market cap – daily retail flows have collapsed, and the retail turnover has become virtually nonexistent. 

This brings us back to what Canaccord said: while the bank concluded that based on the early performance of SpaceX, “Tech can likely keep its momentum in the short term”, it warned that “a new, more dangerous layer of air is now underneath these stocks.“

Sure enough, with the momentum gone, and the realization that trillions of shares are about to be unlocked, the stock has slumped for 3 straight days, culminating with Monday’s plunge when, with SpaceX rushing to take advantage of the bond market euphoria to sell over $20 billion in investment-grade bonds for the first time before the bond window shuts in order to refinance an existing bridge loan with much higher interest, SPCX shares plunged 16.4%, shedding a record $600 billion in market value, and following a 5% drop on Wednesday and a 3.5% slide on Thursday, the stock is now just barely above where it broke for trading at $150 two weeks ago. 

Worse, the stock tagged its post-IPO opening price of $150 after hours, and should the stock open below that tomorrow, then everyone who bought in the open market (and held) will be underwater.

What is especially notable, or perhaps expected, is that the pump and dump is taking place with only 5% of SPCX float available for trading: 95% of the stock is still locked-up for trading. But that will change soon:

22V Research strategist Jeff Jacobson said that there is a 20% insider share unlock after Space’s earnings announcement in early to mid-August. In addition, there is a 10% share unlock if the stock trades 30% above the IPO price, as well as 7% share unlocks set for around Aug. 21 and then again on Sept. 10.

Jacobson said insiders could potentially sell 44% of SpaceX shares by early September, increasing the current float by about 900%.

In other words, it’s only going to get more difficult to lift the stock from here, and meanwhile, Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading said that “sellers are back in control,” adding that “anyone in the world who wanted to buy this has bought it already.”

In its take on today’s move, Bloomberg wrote that today’s drop in SpaceX “managed to bring much of the market down with it.” 

We don’t know if that’s indeed the case yet, but in this market – which has been driven almost entirely by retail euphoria and momentum chasing from the March lows – should retail indeed get cold feet, first to SpaceX, then to the Memory bubble, and finally to Semi stocks which have become the main beneficiaries of the AI trade…

Divergence between Hyperscalers and Semis becoming untenable: massive capex spending is the key variable. pic.twitter.com/ifrtT9LJnR

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 22, 2026

… then it will be time to invert TS Eliot, as the selling whimper becomes a bang. 

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on June 21 that three more cases of the flesh-eating New World screwworm have been detected in Texas, bringing the total in the United States to 15.

The latest cases involved a lamb in Crockett County and two calves in Edwards County, Texas. The USDA said in a post on X that it would immediately begin releasing sterile flies outside the affected areas in Crockett County following the new detection there.

According to the agency, the new cases in Edwards County were expected because they occurred within the current affected areas, where sterile flies were already being released.

“Because a fly’s life cycle is an average of 21 days, it takes multiple reproductive cycles for populations to die off following sterile fly releases,“ it stated.

”As such, we may continue to see cases occur in already affected zones—a sign that our surveillance is working.”

The USDA said it would continue carrying out “aggressive eradication efforts” alongside state partners, including deploying tens of millions of sterile flies each week in and around the infestation area.

On June 11, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of generic nitenpyram for treating New World screwworm infestations in dogs and cats that weigh at least 2 pounds and are more than 3 weeks old. The drug is made by Felix Pharmaceuticals.

Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas said in a June 11 statement that the agency has spent nearly a year preparing for the possible arrival of the screwworm in the country.

“As of today, under the Trump administration’s decisive leadership, the FDA has issued ten [emergency use authorizations] and three conditional approvals for drugs to combat this threat, and this count will continue to grow as we receive more animal drug submissions and unleash American regulatory speed,” Diamantas said.

New World screwworms are flesh-eating parasites that infect livestock, wildlife, and, in rarer cases, humans. Screwworm fly maggots burrow into the living tissue of animals, causing severe wounds that can be fatal.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least seven people had died from screwworm infections in Central America and Mexico as of Jan. 20.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also deployed all available state resources earlier this month to eradicate screwworms after the first confirmed case in South Texas on June 3.

The screwworm fly was officially eradicated from the United States in 1966 through a strategy primarily involving the release of sterile males, which mated with females, resulting in infertile eggs.

While other countries line up on either side of Hormuz, hoping for clarity whether they actually can cross this time, Iran isn’t wasting any time moving its oil out of the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz after the US lifted the naval blockade outside the chokepoint and the U.S. and Iran discuss a framework on a lasting peace deal.

Even as Western shippers and insurers remain wary of the conflicting signals about how open the Strait of Hormuz really is – after all it was opened once before just to close hours later and remain shut for over a month – Iran is rushing to evacuate barrels it wasn’t able to push past the U.S. blockade over the past two months.

At least three supertankers, carrying a total of 6 million barrels of Iranian crude, moved to transit the Strait of Hormuz early on Monday, in open AIS navigation showing Singaporean waters as a destination, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed.

That’s the most Iranian crude openly making its way out the key Iranian oil port at Kharg Island and into the Strait of Hormuz in a day since the war began on February 28, according to Bloomberg.

The three tankers seen entering the Strait of Hormuz outbound on Monday were signaling destinations offshore Singapore, a known ship-to-ship (STS) transfer area for Iranian crude before loading on the tankers mostly bound for China’s independent refiners, the so-called teapots.

The surge in Iranian shipments out of the Gulf and into waters near the Malacca and Singapore Straits would give Iran a lifeline to boost its exports that had suffered from the US blockade in the past few weeks.

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

Grid operators are concerned that the Chinese drive to hike the share of renewable electricity powering AI would raise the risks for power firms as peak demand at data centers is difficult to forecast.

Industry analysts and officials have told Reuters that the Chinese strategic priority of having renewables power the majority of electricity demand at data centers by 2030 may not be feasible.

“From what we understand, they (data centers) cannot really adjust power consumption load much,” Reuters quoted Pei Shanpeng, a director of Chinese power firm State Power Investment Corporation, as telling attendees at a recent industry conference in Beijing.

“GPUs are very expensive, so once they are purchased, operators want to use them as quickly and as intensively as possible,” the official added.

China plans to use massively its renewable energy boom to power the data centers.

The country has just launched the world’s first offshore wind-powered underwater data center, using seawater cooling and renewable electricity to reduce energy, water, and land requirements. The 24 MW-capacity Shanghai Lingang undersea data center demonstration was developed by HiCloud Technology and the state-owned China Communications Construction.

A report from last year by the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that the data center electricity supply in China was dominated by coal with a near 70% share as of 2025, followed by renewables with nearly 20%, nuclear close to 10%, and natural gas accounting for the remainder.

Solar PV and wind would add nearly 90 TWh of additional electricity for data centers by 2030, “supported by an increase in the share of renewables in the grid electricity mix, provincial co-location mandates and policies to prioritise the construction of data centres in renewables-rich western China,” the IEA said.

However, analysts and industry officials say the data center sector isn’t a good fit for renewable energy because of the lack of visibility about peak demand from these power-sucking centers.

As soon as the national average for 87-octane gasoline at the pump dipped below the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon level early last week, we observed multiple institutional desks begin to forecast that the light at the end of the tunnel was beginning to materialize for consumers, especially working-class households that have been financially battered by surging fuel prices over the past several months.

UBS analyst Mark Paski told clients about “early signs of a turn in U.S. consumer discretionary.”

Then, Piper Sandler Chief Global Economist Nancy Lazar told clients, “If inflation has indeed peaked, that will boost real incomes (nominal incomes have been solid), a positive for both real consumer spending and housing, but don’t expect robust growth in either.”

Gathering more ground-level intelligence about possible consumer sentiment shifts, or at least the early chapters of it, Wolfe Research polled 270 industry contacts on the consumer outlook this summer.

“Optimism has picked-up a bit relative to April/May, but there are persistent concerns about higher gas prices, inflation reaccelerating & price competition in the 2H,” Wolfe Research analyst Greg Badishkanian wrote.

Badishkanian continued, “Our checks occurred last week and at that point optimism hadn’t reached pre-war levels yet. They were still concerned that if the conflict dragged on, it would hurt their respective industries.”

He noted, “When we asked some of the operators within more discretionary segments about the impact of a potential lasting peace deal, they all thought it would boost sales and profitability in the coming quarter or two.”

Where has operator optimism changed the most versus two months ago?

The read-through: Consumer sentiment is stabilizing, but the improvement is uneven. The weakest categories are RV dealers, home improvement, boat dealers, beer, auto dealers, fast food, and casual dining, all of which remain negative.

However, the strongest categories are Harley dealers, powersports, ag dealers, short-term rentals, convenience stores, and lodging.

The Harley outperformance is an outlier.

Operators expected that if the US-Iran conflict persisted into July, the impact would only be slightly negative.

Badishkanian and his team spoke with operators across various industries. Here is what they had to say

Leisure

We met with Harley’s (HOG) investor relations to discuss trends in the business and conversation primarily focusing around retail sales, sustainability of the business, inventories, & new product launches. HOG highlighted that retail sales are accelerating, and dealer sentiment is improving for them, but there is still work to be done in order to maintain the momentum of the top-line. The team reiterated that inventories remain healthy worldwide, and mgm has prioritized destocking. The launches of the Sprint and Sportster models were brought up in the conversation as key initiatives for maintaining momentum into 2027. Mgmt highlighted that despite the newer, lower-priced bikes being lower margin they expect them to profitable and bring in a newer entry level customer to Harley.

We caught up with Norwegian’s (NCLH) VP of Investor Relations & Corporate Communications this week when we talked through the 3Q yields pressure, revenue management, marketing strategy, the Great Stirrup Cay initiatives, and shore side cost management. NCLH still expects 3Q yields to be under the most pressure for the full year, and the company has started to shift towards getting 2027 on the right trajectory. The Great Stirrup Cay Water Park and Pier are set to open on September 4th, with an expectation for 25bps of yield lift in 2026 and 75bps for the full year ’27. The team also highlighted a greater focus on marketing spend, & corporate costs shoreside.

Restaurants

Yum! Brands (YUM) has entered definitive agreements to sell Pizza Hut for $2.7B. Pizza Hut (excluding Pizza Hut China) will be acquired by LongRange capital for ~$1.5B. In addition, Pizza Hut China will be acquired by Yum! China for ~ $1.2B. The company will continue to provide Byte (its proprietary tech platform), as well as select corporate services to Pizza Hut ex-China. Yum! expects the fees from these services to offset corporate G&A expenses historically allocated to Pizza Hut. Both transactions are expected to close in 3Q26.

FAT Brands completed the final step of its bankruptcy restructuring, with FBG Bid Co. acquiring assets tied to 13 concepts for about $595 million and transferring more than 1,700 restaurants to a lender-backed group. The company filed for Chapter 11 in January under roughly $1.5 billion in debt. Twin Peaks was sold separately for $359.5 million, and Smokey Bones ceased operations after no buyer was found.

Food Retailers

Kroger (KR) reported roughly in-line 1Q results with expectations and reaffirmed its FY outlook. ID sales ex. fuel increased +1.0% (64bps headwind from egg deflation) vs consensus at +0.9% and decelerated 60bps on a 2-yr basis from the prior quarter. Adj EPS of $1.58 missed consensus at $1.59. Kroger continues to expect ID sales of +1.0-2.0% (including ~130 bps headwind from IRA) with the midpoint in line with consensus at +1.5%. Operating profit of $5.0-5.2bn is 3.4% above consensus of $4.93bn, as questions persist about the level of price investments to come. The EPS range of $5.10 to $5.30 is 3c below consensus.

Ahold Delhaize (Not Covered) announced the nomination of Claire Peters as the new CEO of Ahold Delhaize USA. Ahold Delhaize US operates Food Lion, Giant, Hannaford and Stop & Shop supermarket locations in the US. Claire most recently served as the VP fo Worldwide Fresh at Amazon, but has also held roles at Woolworth’s Group & Tesco.

Broadlines & Hardlines

The Joint Center for Housing Studies released their 2026 State of Nation’s Housing report this week. The report and webcast to follow were cautious as the affordability crisis continues to worsen, remodel spend is still above pre-COVID levels and pull forward remains a challenge for the industry. Median Home Prices remain elevated vs median household income, at nearly 2008 highs, and affordable units supply continues to be constrained. Click here for our full takeaways and data parsing.

Target (TGT) continues to accelerate the pace of change in the business. One of the best examples of this is fun 101, where Target is allowing merchants to have more runway in these categories to make changes. Recent announcements like the Issac Mizrahi partnership, Olivia Rodrigo’s exclusive music launch, and even increased focus on Trading Cards are driving customers back to TGT. We think further leaning into Fun 101 and these cultural events will be an important part of Target’s go-forward strategy and whether the business can maintain momentum. Read Spencer’s full takeaways here.

La-Z-Boy (LZB; not covered), a furniture manufacturer, reported F’4Q results which beat Street estimates, with F’1Q guidance also ahead of consensus. Management believes they have levers to drive growth in their business, while the timing of a return to growth in the broader industry remains uncertain, but remain optimistic about an eventual rebound in furniture and home furnishings, which historically grew +3% to +4%

CarMax (KMX; not covered) posted F’1Q (ending May 31st) results ahead of expectations with EPS of $1.31 vs FC 97c. Sales were up +6.2% to $8.01bn vs FC for $7.42bn, led by higher wholesale revenue, which grew +14% (units: +8.4%; avg selling price: +5.1%). Used unit comps were also better than feared at -0.8% vs FC -2.7%

A consumer inflection point appears to be approaching, but the timing still largely hinges on fuel prices staying well below the $4 national average.

Authored by Patti Johnson via The Burning Platform blog,

That “black pill moment” is arriving faster than many realize. Not primarily through sweeping new government mandates, but through private companies quietly normalizing biometric data collection under the banners of “security,” “fraud prevention,” and “child protection.” They are erecting the infrastructure for a world where you cannot easily participate in daily life, commerce, or even basic online access without surrendering your face, your license scan, or other biometrics. Once the systems exist and the data flows, laws can simply ratify what private actors have already made routine.

In a recent commentary “Digital ID Black Pill Moment”, I highlighted a sobering reality: 186 out of 198 countries already have digital ID systems in place. Only a shrinking handful of nations lack foundational national digital IDs. As I wrote, “the global push for digital IDs is far advanced, likely past the point of no return, aligning with the UN’s 2030 goal of universal legal identity and enabling a globalist digital currency system that could control access to everything.”

Facebook/Meta: Selfie or Stay Locked Out

Government mandates are not required to finish building the digital surveillance prison. Citizens are willingly submitting their biometrics to access social media sites. For example, I am no longer on Facebook. They banned me during the Covid era after I began sharing information about the true contents of the shots and alternative treatments. A friend just sent me a Facebook post and I could not view it without taking a selfie and sending it to FB. No way was I going to comply.

Try viewing certain Facebook posts or recovering a flagged account, and you may hit this wall. Users are increasingly prompted to submit a video selfie turning their head in different directions so the system can map facial geometry to “prove you’re a real person” or restore access. The company states it uses this to combat scams and compromised accounts, and claims the video is deleted after verification.

Here is what the prompt looks like:

blogger.googleusercontent.com

about.fb.com

This is not a rare case. It is quickly becoming the normal way companies handle account recovery, new account setup, suspected suspicious activity, or even basic access to articles and information on many websites. Your facial biometric data is sent to a private company that already holds huge amounts of user information and is under constant pressure and often partners with governments and international standards organizations.

Uber: Selfie + Driver’s License Scan Just to Ride

My husband recently tried to order an Uber ride and was required to submit a selfie plus front and back photos of his driver’s license before the app would proceed. Uber’s official materials describe identity verification (including selfies matched via facial recognition) primarily for drivers to prevent account sharing, and for riders it is often framed as optional for a “verified badge.” Yet real users are encountering these hard prompts in practice.

Here are examples of the verification flows Uber and similar platforms use:

ktla.com

i.ytimg.com

The stated reason is safety and trust on the platform. The practical effect is another private company harvesting and cross-referencing your facial biometrics and government ID data.

Banking, Finance, Telecom, and Beyond

Major banks now routinely use facial recognition or selfie verification for mobile app logins, high-value transfers, account opening (a process known as KYC, or “Know Your Customer” identity verification required by banking regulations), and fraud checks. Telecom providers require selfies for SIM card swaps (replacing your phone’s Subscriber Identity Module card) or account modifications. Gig economy platforms (such as ride-sharing or delivery services like Uber, DoorDash, or similar) use third-party services that demand selfie plus ID document verification. Some retail and payment systems are piloting biometric checkout.

Here is the kind of selfie/biometric prompt users see in identity verification flows used by banks and fintechs:

veriff.com

verifynow.co.za

Proponents say this reduces identity theft, speeds up processes, and improves security compared to passwords or one-time codes. The result, however, is the same: your face becomes the key to your money and services.

Driver’s Licenses Already Contain Biometric Data

Every U.S. state requires a facial photograph on driver’s licenses and state IDs.

That photo is biometric data. Many states’ DMV databases feed into facial recognition systems used by law enforcement. REAL ID standards and emerging mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) are digitizing and enhancing this further. Eighteen states already have biometric-enabled digital driver’s licenses.

Age Verification Laws Accelerate the Trend

Florida’s HB 3 (Online Protections for Minors) restricts social media access for children under 14 and requires parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. To comply, platforms must verify ages using government ID or biometric data. The result is that adults, too, will need to submit ID or facial biometrics simply to access platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and others. Similar requirements are advancing under the UK’s Online Safety Act, which mandates robust age verification, including facial age estimation, for sites hosting potentially harmful or pornographic content, with ripple effects across social media.

Parents Should be the Gatekeepers Not the Government

Proponents argue these measures protect children from predators, explicit content, and addictive algorithms, while giving parents better tools to manage access. I believe the real solution lies with parents themselves. Parents should be the primary gatekeepers, setting firm limits and supervising where their children go online.

Today’s children, immersed in cell phones from a young age, are losing the ability to communicate effectively on a normal, personal level. If I were raising children now, I would not give them a cell phone. We grew up with perfectly fulfilling childhoods without them. Instead of relying on government-mandated biometric checkpoints, we should return responsibility to families. Yet the architecture being built creates a universal biometric gateway for internet participation: one that affects everyone, not just minors.

The Bigger Picture: Agenda 2030 and the “Cannot Buy or Sell” Infrastructure

This is not happening in a vacuum. It aligns with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 push for universal legal identity by 2030 and the broader frameworks of the Great Reset / Agenda 2030. Private companies are doing the expensive, politically risky work of normalizing biometric surrender and building interoperable databases. Once the data exists at scale, faces linked to licenses, accounts, transactions, and online activity, adding legal requirements for purchases, services, or internet access becomes trivial.

We are told it is all for safety, convenience, fraud prevention, and protecting the vulnerable. Yet the cumulative effect is a world in which opting out becomes increasingly difficult, anonymity erodes, and every interaction can be tracked, verified, and potentially scored or restricted through biometric identifiers.

The infrastructure for systems in which you “cannot buy or sell without an ID” is being assembled one prompted selfie at a time by Meta, Uber, banks, app developers, and verification vendors. This often happens before governments even pass the final laws.

We have been warned. The question now is whether we will continue feeding the system our most personal biometric data in the name of convenience, or whether we will recognize the trap while there is still room to resist, opt out where possible, demand real privacy protections, and support alternatives that do not require surrendering our faces to participate in society.

A Biden-appointed federal judge – who quit her previous job as partner at the Jones Day law firm because they did work for the 1st Trump administration – just ruled against the administration’s plan to create a database to verify citizenship to be able to vote in US elections. 

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled on Monday that officials across several government agencies “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable,” in order to comply with the Trump administration’s attempts to implement election integrity measures. 

A March executive order directed the Social Security Administration (SSA) to create a “State Citizenship List” derived from its data, naturalization records and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, an existing database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is used to determine eligibility for federal programs.

Since the EO, said Sooknanan, “states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information,” she wrote in her 75-page ruling. 

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens,” she continued. 

According to Sooknanan – ruling in favor of the League of Women voters, efforts to establish the database were unlawful – and violated the Social Security Act, Privacy Act and Administrative Procedure Act.

BREAKING: We just won a court order blocking the Trump-Vance admin’s attempt to haphazardly consolidate Americans’ sensitive data into a massive government database.

This protects millions from baseless investigations and unlawful voter roll purges – a critical win for voting… pic.twitter.com/cZxduqtqRi

— Democracy Forward (@DemocracyFwd) June 22, 2026

Reacting to the ruling, far-left organization Democracy Now wrote “This protects millions from baseless investigations and unlawful voter roll purges – a critical win for voting rights.” 

Meanwhile, DHS general counsel James Percival said on X: “t’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist. Judge Sparkle Soknanan’s latest ruling preventing DHS from addressing alien voting is just the latest example.” 

It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist. Judge Sparkle Soknanan’s latest ruling preventing DHS from addressing alien voting is just the latest example!

— James Percival (@DHSGenCounsel) June 22, 2026

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Waymo has recalled its entire fleet of vehicles after some of its driverless cars were caught speeding into freeway construction zones.

The voluntary recall on June 13 of the California-based tech company’s 3,871 vehicles is to fix its 5th-generation Automated Driving System (ADS) software so that it will recognize and avoid construction zones.

“Waymo’s mission is to be the world’s most trusted driver, and the data shows that we’re making roads safer in the communities in which we operate,” a Waymo spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) estimates that the entire fleet carries the software defect, according to the agency’s safety report.

“Under certain circumstances the [autonomous vehicles] may enter and drive at speed in freeway construction zones due to inappropriately prioritizing the avoidance of other freeway hazards and/or failing to recognize the construction zone,” NHTSA stated in the report.

Waymo investigated one such incident on April 11 and five on April 19 in which Waymo cars autonomously drove past ramp closure signs into freeway construction zones in Phoenix, Arizona, according to the report.

The company’s field safety committee implemented driving restrictions on April 20 until more improvements could be made, according to the report.

On May 18, seven Waymo vehicles in the San Francisco Bay Area entered freeway lanes in construction zones by driving between cones designating the lane’s closure. In this case, the software did not prioritize avoiding the other freeway hazards or failed to recognize the construction zone.

The safety committee put restrictions in place after the May incident, Waymo reported.

The recall is a notice of the company’s intent to improve its software and address the problems.

Waymo voluntarily restricted freeway operations in May while making improvements to the software to avoid other freeway hazards.

No collisions or injuries were reported as a result of the construction zone incidents. The company started offering public riders trips using freeways last November in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix areas.

The 5th-generation Waymo Driver on the all-electric Jaguar I-PACE. Waymo

This is Waymo’s second full-fleet recall this year.

In May, the U.S. Transportation Department issued a recall of Waymo’s 3,791 vehicles after one of its vehicles drove into a flooded and impassable road in San Antonio, Texas, and was swept away despite the car detecting that the road might be impassable.

The company notified federal and state regulators before filing a voluntary federal software recall that was published by the NHTSA, according to a company spokesperson.

New Ojai Rides

On May 28, Waymo rolled out its newest vehicle—the Ojai—featuring its 6th-generation technology serving riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

The boxy, baby blue robotaxi is a fully electric and designed to be fully autonomous. The vehicle is designed for full accessibility with braille and screen readers.

The 6th-generation Waymo Driver is integrated into the all-electric Ojai. Waymo

The doors open like an elevator and the cabin is meant to feel like a “living room on wheels” with large LED screens and customizable temperatures and music, Waymo said.

Waymo plans to expand Ojai’s service area to include Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego before opening it to more cities later this year, according to the company.

China’s monthly gold imports reached their highest in more than two years in May, showing the world’s biggest buyer’s appetite for bullion remained resilient as prices remained under pressure; the number prompted some to scratch their heads as to where all this gold is going in light of tepid official central bank purchases, coupled with the lowest gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange since the covid outbreak. 

As Bloomberg reports, imports were around 163 tons last month, the highest since March 2024, according to customs data released on Saturday. Volumes for the first five months of 2026 were about 692 tons, up by about 76% from a year earlier. 

Chinese demand for physical bullion bars, as well as metal linked to gold accumulation plans (low-barrier products that allow investors to buy gold incrementally), have been among the main drivers of the surge, said Song Jiangzhen, a researcher at the Guangzhou Southern Gold Market Academy. 

China also started implementing a new import licensing regime for gold from June 1, with certain banks facing fewer restrictions. But the change may have prompted some banks to use up their existing quotas before the new system began, Song said.

Curiously, in its latest official monthly update, China’s central banb, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) only increased its gold reserves by nearly 10 tonnes last month, its 19th consecutive month of bullion purchases. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) announced on Sunday that China’s official gold reserves rose by 320,000 troy ounces or 9.95 tonnes in May to a total of 74.96 million troy ounces or 2331.52 tonnes.

China’s total foreign exchange reserves rose to $3.4422 trillion at the end of May, increasing by $31.7 billion or 0.93% from April. This is the highest level for China’s FX reserves since November 2015; they have remained above $3.3 trillion for the past 10 months.

SAFE attributed the growth of reserves to a number of factors, including a firmer US Dollar Index and rising global asset prices, adding that China’s sound economic momentum has underpinned the stability of its reserves.

Experts have noted that China’s rising foreign exchange reserves are closely linked to the country’s export performance.  China’s total foreign trade in the first four months of 2026 rose to $2.39 trillion, an increase of 14.9% year-on-year, with exports rising by 11.3% percent to $1.37 trillion and imports rising 20% percent to $1.01 trillion, according to the latest data from China’s General Administration of Customs

According to the latest central bank gold purchase tracker from Goldman, of the 59 tonnes of gold purchased by central bank in April, China’s PBOC was estimated to have bought 24 tonnes of gold, or well below the recent pace of imports which are about 5x greater. While the pace of central bank gold purchases has moderated to ~50 tonnes/month on a 3-month (seasonally adjusted) and 12-month moving average basis, Goldman views the ongoing diversification trend as structural.

Goldman remains bullish on gold, with continued central bank diversification the main structural driver of the bank’s constructive base case for gold prices, contributing 9% to its forecast for appreciation by Dec26. As we highlighted last week, a recent World Gold Council survey supports Goldman’s optimistic view: a record 45% of the 76 central banks surveyed between February and May expect to increase their own gold reserves over the next 12 months, while ~90% expect global reserves to rise with the remainder expecting broadly stable holdings. As a result, Goldman assumes continued central bank accumulation of 50t/month in 2026 and 40t/month in 2027.

Meanwhile, as Kitco notes, China’s domestic gold market has shown definite signs of cooling in recent weeks. 

“Amid heightened market uncertainty, gold ETFs have seen an overall reduction in assets under management, with several funds experiencing significant net outflows,” noted a report from Gelonghui Finance. “As of June 3, 14 gold ETFs recorded combined net outflows exceeding RMB 10 billion [$1.48 billion] over the past month.”

“The previously widely accepted investment view of ‘buying on dips amid falling gold prices’ has started to face divergence under current volatile market conditions,” they added.

Gold prices have retreated by about a quarter from the record highs reached in January, weighed down by EM selling (most notably Turkey in the early days of the Iran war), and global inflation fears amid the war in the Middle East which have pushed the US dollar sharply higher. While strong buying from Chinese consumers was a key catalyst for the January frenzy, domestic demand has since moderated, but without a major slump.

Adding to the mathematical mystery, the latest numbers from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) showed that gold withdrawals in May totaled only 63.5 tonnes – the lowest level since February of 2020 during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak, and around half of what they were in March of this year. Industry professionals told Gelonghui Finance that “while short-term gold price volatility may persist, the core rationale supporting gold’s strategic allocation value remains intact over the medium to long term.”

In other words, there appears to be a gap between near record imports, tepid official central bank demand, and muted gold withdrawals from the SGE. 

This is not a new development: as we documented previously, China is well known for indicating just modest central bank purchases, even as total Chinese purchases of gold on the London OTC market are orders of magnitude higher. 

China reported 5 tonnes of gold purchases in February (160k oz per PBOC).
China actually bought 50 tonnes of gold in February (per GS) pic.twitter.com/oQifGszNcQ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 13, 2025

Separately, Bloomberg also reported that at least four of the 11 banks participating in Hong Kong’s new gold clearing system are importing large bullion bars in preparation for the mechanism’s planned launch in July.

Traders are receiving orders from some of the clearing banks to move 400-ounce gold bars into the city, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter. The bars meet the London Good Delivery industry standard.

The 400-ounce bars are typically traded by banks and sovereign entities in London, the world’s largest bullion trading hub, but are less common in the Asian market, which is dominated by much smaller kilobars. The banks need to build up inventories to allow for physical delivery when clearing begins next month.

By launching its gold clearing system, Hong Kong is securing first-mover advantage in a push to become Asia’s preeminent hub for bullion trading. Last week, Singapore announced its own plans to launch a clearing mechanism by the end of the year.

Both cities are aiming to capitalize on strong demand in Asia, where many investors remain bullish about the long-term prospects for the precious metal as an alternative store of wealth despite the recent drop in price as the war in the Middle East fanned concerns around inflation and higher interest rates.

In an emailed response to questions, a spokesperson for the government agency behind the system, known as the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, said the clearing company had been “working closely with the market to formulate the framework and rules of the clearing system” and that preparatory work had entered its final stage.

Eleven banks are on the board of the Hong Kong Precious Metals Central Clearing Company. Some of these lenders will become clearing banks from the launch, whereas others will take longer to build up their bullion capacity. While Hong Kong plans to start by using the London Good Delivery standard, its future plans are still to be decided, the people said.

In Singapore, the clearing system will be aligned with the London Good Delivery framework for large bars, as well as delivery and settlement standards for kilobars adopted by major exchanges in Chicago and Shanghai.

Authored by Ron Paul

Against the odds, the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the US and Iran appears to be holding, after threats and counter-threats. It may collapse, but it has survived a first round of talks between the two sides in Switzerland over the weekend.

President Trump started a war on Iran against all sober guidance and in violation of the US Constitution’s requirement that only Congress can declare war. There must be a reckoning for our elected leaders who violate their oath of office, the Constitution, and simple common sense.

However, what is more telling is the reaction when President Trump finally took the correct move and attempted to end the war. The neocons who had hailed him as a great leader – Levin, Bolton, Pompeo, etc. – suddenly turned against him when he turned against further escalation of the war.

Even Trump’s top funder, Miriam Adelson, attacked Trump in her newspaper Israel Hayom. “You could have been the greatest president of all, but you failed,” the newspaper wrote in an editorial.

Not much gratitude from the Israel-first crowd, even if the war was started to benefit Israel.

And more telling even than this was the reaction of the “opposition” party in Congress, the Democrats. They attacked him harder for ending – or at least pausing – the war more than for starting the war in the first place!

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) called the MOU a “capitulation.” Sen Chris Murphy (D-CT) called the MOU an “embarrassing document.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar falsely claimed that President Trump was paying Iran $300 billion to re-open Hormuz.

This is more evidence – as if any is needed – that our foreign policy is run by the “uniparty.” When it comes to wars, there is no Republican Party nor is there a Democratic Party. There is only the “yes!” party.

Congress remains silent in the run-up to war. Congress remains silent when the President launches a war. Congress even remains silent when the war begins going badly. It is only on those rare occasions that a president takes steps to correct his mistake that Congress finds its voice.

Yes, there is plenty to criticize. After weekend talks, the US side, led by Vice President JD Vance, is celebrating as a “breakthrough” that the Strait of Hormuz is open again and that Iran has reportedly agreed to the return of UN inspectors. But the Strait was open before this war and UN inspectors were in Iran before President Trump unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA “Iran Deal” in his first term.

The only difference now is that we burned through likely several hundred billion dollars, we lost dozens of aircraft and other military equipment, and we likely lost more service members than the Pentagon is admitting.

It is a reminder of why the Founders intended to make sure that any war must be declared by the people’’ Representatives before the first bullet is shot: it should be very hard to launch wars.

Nevertheless, those who are truly against the wars should, in my opinion, hold their fire for the time being in hope that a lasting resolution can be found. The President is being attacked from all sides by the war party. Now may not be the best time for the peace party to join in.